Wikus (center) delivers an eviction notice to a Prawn. Click to enlarge.

Before I get to the review, let me answer some questions you probably have. No, District 9 does not star any actors you’ve ever heard of. Yes, it’s produced by Lord of the Rings‘ Peter Jackson. And yes, it’s another film about intelligent aliens landing on Earth.

But damn! For a movie whose setup has been played out on the big and small screens seemingly hundreds of times, District 9 is the most refreshing science fiction flick I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Click to enlarge.

As the documentary-style “footage” that opens the film points out, the aliens here don’t magically gravitate towards New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo or any other city accustomed to interstellar disruption. In 1982, their mammoth ship winds up stranded over Johannesburg, South Africa; after some hesitation, the government cuts its way into the ship’s hull, only to find millions of bug-like creatures, starving and helpless.

Naturally, these pitiful beings are rescued, in then cruelly taken advantage of. Their temporary residence becomes a militarized ghetto, and over the years the humans already living in Johannesburg turn against the buggers, slurring them as “Prawns” and segregating the non-humans from the rest of society.

In 2010, our hero (sort of) arrives. Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) works for Multi-National United, a corporation tasked with evicting the Prawns from their sucky neighborhood to an even worse one, far removed from the bigoted civilized human folk.

Naturally, the MNU has nasty motives underlying this move–they’re the world’s second-largest weapons dealer and want to harness the power of the alien weapons. When Wikus is exposed to a mysterious black goo, his DNA starts undergoing an uncontrollable transformation that brings out the worst in his bosses and the best in him.

That’s as much of the plot as I’m going to give away; the rest, you’ll have to see for yourself. Walking out of the theater, I was so impressed and pleased with what I had just seen that I made a conscious effort to dredge up thoughts of what I didn’t like. Here’s what I wrote down soon afterwards:

• Script
• Not as fun as Star Trek

Wikus wields a Prawn blaster. Click to enlarge.

First, the script–it leans heavily on people shouting “F**k!” and, compared to a lot of sci-fi action films, District 9 is devoid of quotable one-liners. This would be a legitimate concern if not for one thing: District 9 is not like other sci-fi action films in other ways, too, and is, simply put, a better movie for lack of their tropes.

Everything about director Neill Blomkamp’s debut effort feels fresh, like the first long gasp of oxygen after too much time spent underwater. My gut reaction was to reject, or at least feel unsure about, the things that made it different – a litmus test that doesn’t bode well for how I’d react if aliens landed in Providence. Which brings us to my second “criticism”: District 9’s dissimilarity to J.J. Abrams‘ Star Trek.

As a diehard Star Wars fan, I was bowled over by the reboot of Trek earlier this summer. The night of the District 9 preview screening I attended, I told my Facebook friends that it was “a close second to Star Trek for best sci-fi-action-epic of the summer.”

Upon reflection, I would like to retract that statement. Your mileage may vary, but in my book a great film is able to entertain while also making you think. Blomkamp’s flick does both of those things masterfully, keeping us engaged, sympathetic and amped, all the while prodding away at the xenophobic tendencies we all share.

District 9 is a great film. Put another way, it is not only the best sci-fi-action-epic of the summer, but also the best I’ve seen short of the original Star Wars trilogy.

Grade: A